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Amazon diversity report no surprise, largely male and white

Amazon's diversity scorecard fills out how one would expect from tech firms these days, unfortunately.

Rachel King Staff Writer
Rachel King is a staff writer for ZDNet based in San Francisco.
Rachel King
2 min read

At the leadership level, Amazon's diversity divide widens to 75 percent male and 25 percent female. James Martin/CNET

It's becoming commonplace for tech companies to now reveal numbers breaking down gender and ethnicity demographics within their workforces -- no matter how deplorable they might be.

Amazon is finally ponying up its own stats following the likes of Apple, Google, Microsoft, Twitter and eBay, among others.

But while Amazon's report is much more fleshed out (or at least flashier), the Internet giant's diversity scorecard fills out how one would expect these days, unfortunately.

The Seattle-headquarted corporation's worldwide employee base is roughly 63 percent male and 37 percent female overall as of September 2014. Compared to some rivals down in Silicon Valley, that might not seem that bad.

But when you look at the leadership level, the divide widens to 75 percent male and 25 percent female.

Looking at ethnic diversity, Amazon provided figures for the United States as of July 2014, revealing that more than half (60 percent) of the domestic workforce is white.

The remaining 40 percent breaks down with much smaller representation doled out with 18 percent black, 13 percent Asian and 9 percent Hispanic.

Once again, the gap becomes a gulf at the management level with 71 percent of leadership roles filled by white employees.

amazon-diversity-stats.jpg
Amazon/Screenshot by CNET

Amazon inferred one of its strategies toward encouraging a more diverse workforce is through Affinity Groups, described to provide "critical inputs and insights about where the company should focus its diversity efforts."

The cloud provider stressed these internal organizations play a central role in recruitment, career development and in reaching out to communities outside the company.

Amazon currently sponsors more than half a dozen Affinity Groups dedicated to promoting women and minority groups in varying roles and departments. Examples include Amazon Women in Engineering, Asians@Amazon, the Black Employee Network and Latinos@Amazon.

Furthermore, Amazon added it has programs focused on recruiting military veterans and promotes STEM education programs for middle and high school students in its home state of Washington.

This story originally appeared as "Amazon defends weak diversity scorecard with STEM programs, Affinity Groups" on ZDNet.